There Must Not Be a Ceasefire

Even in its weakest moments, would Britain have risked a cease-fire with Nazi Germany during World War II -- knowing that Hitler habitually broke his promises?

With their usual mixture of human rights concern and hypocrisy, several countries have stepped into the fresh Israel-Gaza conflict by demanding a cease-fire. Egypt has played an important role in this demarche; Hamas has turned down flatly all the conditions on which Egyptian President al-Sisi insisted. How far the war will go still hangs in the balance. As Israeli ground forces now fight with Hamas in their tunnels and bunkers, over 600 Palestinians (largely made up of men of fighting age) have died[1], as well as over 32 Israelis.

The international pressure from all sides for a ceasefire is widening and intensifying. Of course, what a ceasefire amounts to, as it has before, is to give Hamas a second chance. And a third and a fourth — whatever is needed for them to achieve their clearly stated goals of wiping Israel from the map, and then Jews.

What is odd is that the United States and the EU called for a ceasefire after only seven days -- even before the ground offensive began. They did not do that while America and Britain were fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq. Nor did anyone call for a cessation of UN-sponsored NATO air and ground attacks during the Bosnian war. Today, calls for a ceasefire fall on deaf ears in Syria, Iraq, Somalia, and Nigeria, where governments (good or bad) face the forces of armed Islamist terrorists. So why so much pressure on Israel, dubbed as always the aggressor, whose responses to Hamas terrorism are unjustly considered "disproportionate," and whose serious efforts to contain civilian casualties are always disregarded or sneered at?

Hamas has broken or refused to extend ceasefires before this conflict. On this occasion, Israel worked with Egypt to bring about a truce, but Hamas rejected all Egypt's demands and began firing rockets again within hours of the agreement. As a result, Israel was forced to resume air strikes on Gaza.

What use is a ceasefire in this conflict? Have any of the leaders of the "international community" ever read the Hamas Charter, the Mithaq of 1988, still in force today? If they have done so, can they honestly put their hands on their hearts and command Israel to put an end to its efforts to destroy a terrorist regime that has been named as such by most of the "international community," including the United States, Canada, the EU, and other countries? Here is a quotation from that Charter:

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement [Hamas].... There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavours. (Article 13)

Israel has accepted ceasefire agreements many times in the past. And every time, its enemies have used the interval that followed to regroup and rearm their military. David Bedein has recently summarized this determination of Hamas to fight on at whatever cost to itself or the citizens of Gaza (the hudna to which he refers is a temporary truce used in Islamic law to permit Muslims to regroup before continuing jihad):

From November 26, 2006, until May 15, 2007, a Hudna between Hamas and Israel went on for almost six months. One cannot ignore the statement made by Hamas five days before the hudna went into effect: "Hamas's military wing will stop the rocket fire when residents evacuate the city of Sderot." (from November 21, 2006)

During that hudna, Gazans launched 315 missiles targeted at Sderot and the western Negev, according to an IDF spokesman.

And there was another hudna with Gaza which lasted until the end of December. 2008, which witnessed 878 attacks fired from Gaza.

And there was a hudna from the end of Operation Cast Lead on January 18, 2009, to the first day of Operation Pillar of Defense on November 12, 2012.

During that period, approximately 2,000 rockets and missiles were fired from Gaza, sending one million Israelis running to shelters

And from the end of operation 'Pillar of Defense', through June 30th 2014, 300 aerial attacks were launched from Gaza towards southern Israel - during yet another tenuous Hudna.

Hamas does not care a fig for Western initiatives based on secular theories of international law. The Islamic basis for international law is the Islamic shari'a law of jihad, and Hamas is committed to jihad, which its Charter declares to be the ONLY solution to the Palestinian problem.

Islamists are, above all, obsessed with the notion that no-one but Muslims have a right to rule over land once ruled by Muslims; that includes Spain and Portugal, Sicily, Greece, Crete, Cyprus, Sicily, Rhodes, the former Muslim states of India, Romania, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Transylvania, and Armenia. I may have missed a few. Modern Jihadist groups such as the new 'Caliphate," the so-called "Islamic State" in Iraq, boast about their revanchist commitment to retaking former Islamic territories and one day bringing the entire world under Islamic rule. It may be a vain promise, but it is one that sends young men to the battlefront to die for its realization, and puts innocent lives everywhere under the threat of massacre and national collapse.

Like al-Qa'ida and a profusion of groups around the world, Hamas expects Utopia and is willing to sacrifice everything for it.

Even in its weakest moments, would Britain have risked a ceasefire with Nazi Germany during World War II -- knowing that Hitler habitually broke his promises? Those who fight for Utopia believe they alone are right. Hamas cares nothing for international law, the UN, or anyone else. They, along with Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah and others are to Israel what the Nazis were to Great Britain. How is a piece of paper -- made by mere men, not by Allah -- to stop them?

Germany had to be brought to its knees before its people and its Führer saw that the promise of totalitarian rule was no longer an option. With American help, Germany came to its senses and is now a thriving democratic state. The Japanese had to be decisively defeated before its people and Emperor acknowledged that they had no hope of winning, and put down their arms. Today, Japan is a thriving democratic Asian nation. Defeat is not a nation's final destiny, unless they will it so.

A future Palestinian state will thrive when the Palestinians enter a world where international law holds sway, where treaties are made and adhered to, where disarmament is not followed by re-armament, where men and women sit at long tables and thrash out the terms of a peace, and where force is only used in self-defense or in defense of another people. Negotiations are used to accommodate differences instead of run-out-the-clock, as Iran is now skillfully doing with less-skillful Western officials to achieve its nuclear weapons capability. And politics cloaked as religion does not ride roughshod over the welfare and will of the people. And it will be a place where self-glorification and delusions of grandeur do not cancel out the rule of secular law, or ordering ones own people to run onto rooftops or to stay in their homes at the threat of aerial bombardments.

Such a state will not come into being, however, so long as Hamas and the PLO refuse to embrace these values. In the case of Hamas in particular, there will be no peace until the terrorism ends, and the movement is destroyed entirely, with no leaders, no rank and file, no capital, no arms, no infrastructure, no media, no preachers, and no "royalty" in exile.

Israel must act and act hard, just as Britain and the United States fought hard against the Nazi threat. As we are seeing in Iraq and Syria, the Hamas mindset is spreading. Anything short of total defeat will only lead to a resumption of hostilities in the near future. If the UN and foreign states will not act with determination to defeat a terrorist group armed with sophisticated rockets and accompanied by a determination to commit genocide -- if they are happy, as always, to sit on the sidelines and criticize Israel -- then Israel must, as always, go it alone.

The destruction of Hamas will be painful, but its leaders are cowards and braggarts, hiding under hospitals and in five-star hotels throughout the Arab word while telling their citizens to die telegenically for public relations propaganda. The leaders of Hamas hide behind their own men, women and children. They build launch pads, bunkers, weapons depots, and command centers beneath hospitals, schools, and the dwellings of ordinary people. They are playing at being soldiers, but avoid harm for themselves while trying to inflict as much harm as possible on others.

In this photo posted to Twitter by The Wall Street Journal's Nick Casey (and since deleted), a Hamas spokesman uses a room in Gaza's Shifa Hospital for a filmed interview, while seated in front of a huge photo of a bomb crater. The Washington Post has also reported on the hospital as "a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices."

When will the world see that, if Israel were ever to lose, we would all be next? There cannot be a ceasefire until the firing from Hamas has ceased, and ceased for good.

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16 Reader Comments

Neal Maslan • Jul 27, 2014 at 20:16

Hat's off to Denis MacEoin and Gatestone for the courage of their convictions and for MacEoin's carefully presented comparisons between Britain and German, Japan, etc. Regrettably, there are innocents that suffer but the greater good and potentially the sustaining peace occurs with decisive action. The only exception I take to MacEoin's analogies is that in both instances the combatants valued human life. The Islamic jiadhists and the Hamas revere death more than life, so there is little chance for reason to prevail... only complete demilitarization and defeat.

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Frank Adam • Jul 27, 2014 at 17:08

Israel can afford the "butcher's bill" and probably will as there was a Kirschen cartoon in the Jerusalem Post after the assassination of the 3 teenagers and before this Gaza balloon went up. The caption was something like "After this we have all lost patience" [with Hamas and do gooders etc]. Compare the 1% Israeli dead of 1948 , the 1 per mille dead of 1973. The 50 Israeli dead so far these 3 weeks while tragedies to their families are a small price for this war if it is successful enough to silence Hamas as Hizbollah since 2006.

The border counter-raids did not stop Fedayeen in 1953-56 because the Cold War nobbled the UN. Similarly the nobbled UN has done nothing to solve the underlying dispute of Hamas with Israel despite the powers stopping Cast Lead in 2008 and Pillar of Defence in 2012. On the other hand when '67 escaped its cynical Kremlin promoters, it was a black eye for them too and changed the politics of Egypt from trying to bag Palestine to merely recovering Sinai and so it was possible after 1973 to hang Egypt in its own policy line.

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Sam Rothwell • Jul 26, 2014 at 07:51

Dr MacEoin, I agree with you that Israel must act and act hard. One does not deal with a cancer like Hamas by talking at it or otherwise treating with it as if it is acting in good faith. It never does. One must excise it totally or it will grow again

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michael stewart • Jul 26, 2014 at 07:30

Can you not see that you are wasting your breath - or ink ? The world has a blind spot of total illogic when dealing with anything where Israel's security is concerned. They just don't care. Its a case of dual standards. i.e. "Don't do what I do or have done - do what I Say" !!

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William Thompson • Jul 25, 2014 at 20:36

I fully agree. A ceasefire would only be used for Hamas to rearm for another attack.

We in America have our own Neville Chamberlain, John Kerry. Unfortunately we don't seem to have a Winston Churchill!

I as an American would like to see Israel start to keep any part of Gaza they capture in this counter attack as a right of conquest. Especially since Hamas is the aggressor.

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Elsa and Howard Chandler • Jul 25, 2014 at 12:37

As a Holocaust survivor, I must admit your comments are particularly relevant.While we pray for Israeli life, Israel can not stop at this point. This will only give them the opportunity to rearm again. If not immediately, very soon again. I feel sorry for the loss of those people who are innocent and put up as a front.

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gongdark • Jul 25, 2014 at 10:35

Personally, I think Israel should give everyone in the Gaza 36 hours to leave and get to safety. Then the place gets leveled, pulverized, destroyed, eliminated, make It no more, bye bye, never again, etc etc.

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Andrew • Jul 25, 2014 at 09:48

If by now Israel has not realized that the only cease-fire they can afford to consider with Hamas is when there is not a single Hamas trigger-finger left in Gaza that could fire anything, then they might as well prepare to repeat their historic mass suicide of Masada.

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Edward Cline • Jul 25, 2014 at 08:08

Israel must press on and destroy Hamas, trunk, root, branch and twig. It must decimate Hamas's "army," and then go after every kingpin of Hamas, and kill them all through assassination of them in their five-star hotels and homes or whatever other means is feasible. Lop off the heads, and the mass of kill-crazy jihadists will collapse into confusion and be easier to defeat permanently. If that means large "civilian" casualties, so be it. Remember that the "Palestinian" population is taught to hate Jews and Israel without thought, even though Jews and Israel have foolishly supplied them with the necessities of life. This incontinent generosity of people who Arabs and Muslims want to kill means nothing to Hamas's leadership and most ardent and blood-thirsty "militants." Hamas "soldiers" that Israel takes prisoner should not be subsequently confined in cushy jails, as they are now, but just tossed into cells and fed bread and water. No more "exchanges." And about all those "helpless" Gazans: don't forget that they all cheered on 9/11, and 7/7, and on the occasion of every other Islamic massacres (Bali, Madrid, Moscow, Beslan, Luxor, etc.). Israel is a life-giving nation, but the rest of the world forgets that when it must fight for its own life. So I hope fervently that Israel does not agree to another cease-fire, because, as Mr. MacEoin, stresses, cease-fires with Hamas or with any other murdering Islamic outfit merely gives the killers chance to catch their breath and rearm to renew the assault on Israel – and on the West. "Humanitarian" gestures amount to Israel turning its cheek so Hamas can drive a knife through it. Islam isn't the only problem in this context: it is the altruistic "impulse" not to seem ruthless. But ruthlessness is what is necessary to combat killers intent on killing Israel.

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Steve Skeete • Jul 25, 2014 at 07:53

Peace in the Middle East is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve for the following reasons. 'Land for peace' is not peace, it is selling-out. Peace with an enemy whose stated purpose for existence is to annihilate you is not peace, it is suicide. Peace with persons whom you know have no intention of ever keeping their word is not peace, it is folly. Exchanging one soldier for one thousand of the enemy's is not peace, it is blackmail. Peace with an adversary for whom 'peace' is merely the period in which to re-arm for further conflict is not peace, it is futility. Peace to avoid the death of 'innocents' is not peace, it is appeasement. 'Peace at any price' is not peace, it is surrender.

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Deryck Franklyn • Jul 25, 2014 at 07:19

Although the United States supported the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which favoured the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had assured the Arabs in 1945 that the United States would not intervene without consulting both the Jews and the Arabs in that region. The British, who held a colonial mandate for Palestine until May 1948, opposed both the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state in Palestine as well as unlimited immigration of Jewish refugees to the region. Great Britain wanted to preserve good relations with the Arabs to protect its vital political and economic interests in Palestine.

Soon after President Truman took office, he appointed several experts to study the Palestinian issue. In the summer of 1946, Truman established a special cabinet committee under the chairmanship of Dr. Henry F. Grady, an Assistant Secretary of State, who entered into negotiations with a parallel British committee to discuss the future of Palestine. In May 1946, Truman announced his approval of a recommendation to admit 100,000 displaced persons into Palestine and in October publicly declared his support for the creation of a Jewish state. Throughout 1947, the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine examined the Palestinian question and recommended the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. On November 29, 1947 the United Nations adopted Resolution 181 (also known as the Partition Resolution) that would divide Great Britain's former Palestinian mandate into Jewish and Arab states in May 1948 when the British mandate was scheduled to end. Under the resolution, the area of religious significance surrounding Jerusalem would remain a corpus separatum under international control administered by the United Nations.

Although the United States backed Resolution 181, the U.S. Department of State recommended the creation of a United Nations trusteeship with limits on Jewish immigration and a division of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab provinces but not states. The State Department, concerned about the possibility of an increasing Soviet role in the Arab world and the potential for restriction by Arab oil producing nations of oil supplies to the United States, advised against U.S. intervention on behalf of the Jews. Later, as the date for British departure from Palestine drew near, the Department of State grew concerned about the possibility of an all-out war in Palestine as Arab states threatened to attack almost as soon as the UN passed the partition resolution.

Despite growing conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews and despite the Department of State's endorsement of a trusteeship, Truman ultimately decided to recognize the state Israel.

Surely it would have been better for the UN and the USA to set up the state of Israel with a non-Jewish secular constitution which would make all the citizens, indigenous Palestinians and Jews inclusive and enable them to live in peace with each other without the need for partition and any established religion. This is what needs to happen now and this will be the only way peace will ever return to the region. Making the new established country of Israel in 1948 a Jewish state, coupled with partition was a monumental error and the murder, mayhem and turmoil will go on forever or until it spreads outside Palestine causing a wider conflict with greater catastrophic consequences.

Basically and to be blunt all the Palestinians and Jewish people have to do is get rid of God because let's face it he is bloody useless. The people of Israel and Palestine have to realise that they are not just Jews and Muslims and that they are people and then they will be able to live together like civilised human beings. To do this all they all need is to embrace the philosophy of HUMANISM. A philosophy that consigns all gods to the dustbin of history where they belong. We just have to hope that all the bad blood that has been caused by the conflict can be forgotten and a line can be drawn in the sand so we can all move forward. Northern Ireland is a prime example of what can be achieved if you have the will to get rid of the hate and bloody mindedness.

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David Berman Deryck Franklyn • Jul 31, 2014 at 11:20

So much of what you say is true. But you didn't mention that there is already a Palestinian state in existence on the east bank of the Jordan River and it's called Jordan where the majority of the inhabitants are in fact Palestinians.

It might also be worth mentioning that at the time that the partitioning took place the Jews were cheated out of the area that they had been promised but still settled for a smaller area, again the Arab leaders refused to concede even that and went to war, which they lost.

Also the following is true, it has been said that the main problem regarding the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians goes back to the 1948 war of independence which generated some 750,000 Palestinian refugees who have now expanded to 4.5 million. All conveniently financed by the west and the UN.

What so many analysts have consistently failed to mention is that at the same time some 800,000 Jews were forced to leave most of the surrounding Arab countries of their birth, usually in just with the clothes on their backs, just because they were guilty of being Jews.

The main difference here is that those Jewish refugees who sought sanctuary in Israel and the West were absorbed into those countries and now fully contribute to their new host countries. Whereas the Arab countries that absorbed the Palestinian refugees have refused to grant citizenship to the Palestinians thus making them stateless and very bitter.

Israel is a thriving democracy which has so much to offer in scientific, medical, agriculture and innovative start-up technology that would help to enhance the lives of the citizens of the entire region. Instead they are forced to use these skills to fight for their survival against an implacable foe who's only vision of the future is how best to kill and be killed for Allah.

I look forward to the day when these two people can live in peace. I know that I am being very optimistic but the alternatives are even less palatable.

There is just one tiny piece of land that is sanctuary to the Jewish people, whereas the Arab lands are vast by any comparison. Israel will flourish with or without the approval of the Arabs, they may be small but they have the brains the technology and the will to succeed.

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Stephen • Jul 25, 2014 at 06:56

I sense a steely resolve and commitment in the Israeli body politic and civic to finish the job irrespective of U S and international pressure, and how many Israeli soldiers tragically will be killed, as has influenced their action in past conflicts with Palestinian terror operations. The soldiers are going to have to be mourned afterwards, as well as the tragic and heartbreaking loss of life of the Gazan civilians, especially children. This is a game-changer facilitated partly I believe, despite the hand-wringing of the U.S., U.N. and world media, by strange bedfellows such as Egypt, Jordan and the Saudis which has caused increasing Hamas isolation. Even the Europeans with their mealy-mouthed condemnations are coming to the realization that any possible peace with the Palestinians can only be realistic if Hamas is destroyed. I don't know if this can or will be done but with a heavy heart for the human cost I pray so.

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Jim • Jul 25, 2014 at 06:21

Hamas is competing with other Islamists in the Middle East, mainly ISIS. They need a perceived victory in Gaza, to show they are still a force to be reckoned with. Interesting to note their leader lives in Qatar, no doubt arranging funds to be used in the event that Israel capitulates to Obama's double standards.

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John Stewart • Jul 25, 2014 at 05:47

The ones who want this so called ceasefire are the aggressors. If tyrants and fanatics are given what they want, especially in this situation, it only gives them time to retool and redeploy. Their charter should be taken as the true goal and never taken otherwise.

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Harvey Radnor John Stewart • Jul 28, 2014 at 16:47

If you have a new neighbour that comes to live next door to your home and states clearly and categorically as does the Hamas charter that you have no right to exist and keeps attacking you, what do you do? Say "ok I will go elsewhere" or stay and fight? Unfortunately over the last 2000 years this is what has happened to the Jewish people and now is the time to make a stand against these murderous tyrants. If no one would have stood up to Hitler we would now all be living in a world where they would be one race. Make no mistake once Hamas gets rid of the Jews, Christians would follow, followed by every other faith.